The burden of being a top prospect is the crushing expectations that come with it. Spencer Arrighetti has become unfortunately familiar with this feeling, as his rookie season has not gone to plan. Now more than ever, scouting pitchers and judging their potential is based far more on their raw data than their actual performance. Arrighetti’s prospect status has largely been lifted by this, as his actual play across MILB has been fine but not standout. His future and the hope for his career are predicated on him eventually making the most of his excellent stuff. The reason you keep faith in him is because if he can do it, the ceiling is astronomical.
The Stuff Makes The Profile
Arrighetti’s arsenal is based around what has been a double-edged sword for him. He’s been blessed with a very good fastball. He combines good velocity with a steep bat-missing plane, elite extension, and above-average horizontal movement. The issue is that this is the kind of pitch that you can coast on at lower levels, throwing over and over again for whiffs. At the major league level, however, this will not fly. Or rather, it will.
His command of his fastball is less than ideal, and when he’s missed in the zone with it, it has been obliterated. The results have been a bit worse than the expected numbers but either way, this shouldn’t be a below-average whiff pitch. There’s not a perfect comparison for it but it’s somewhere in between the fastballs of Aaron Nola, Freddy Peralta, and Zack Wheeler. It has the potential to play as well as any of them if he could elevate it more consistently.
In the interest of transparency, I’m not entirely sure why his curveball has worked so well for him so far. His command of it is fine but unexceptional, and from a stuff standpoint, it’s fine but not much more. It’s not thrown particularly hard. It has a good amount of horizontal movement and some depth but nothing spectacular at that speed. Yet to this point, it hasn’t allowed good contact, it’s gotten whiffs and chases, along with called strikes. It could just be the small sample, but for now, I’m not going to question it. He’s used it to great effect with two strikes as well, it’s been his most trusty put-away pitch to date. He’s been throwing it a bit harder lately, so maybe this can hold.
He lives dangerously with his cutter, zoning it constantly. It’s worked to this point, however, racking up called strikes and whiffs without issue. The contact against it has been better than you’d expect for a cutter as well. He’s shown a bit of feel for running it in on left-handed hitters too. Judging this type of cutter by its movement probably isn’t going to do much, they tend to rely on their surrounding arsenal more than their individual quality.
Arrighetti’s sweeper is decent. Its velocity and movement are pretty average, but his unique release should help it play up. In the sample we’ve seen, this pitch performs well at this level when he’s keeping it close enough to the zone to be enticing. He needs to work on his command of it, but it’s a great weapon against right-handed hitters.
For a pitcher with such a low release, his changeup has a surprising lack of depth to it. Even among other pitchers with fastballs that move like his from this type of release, they tend to be able to kill more IVB than he does. He even drops his slot to throw it, but still, it doesn’t drop as much as others. It’s not a good type of unique, but it’s not an awful changeup. It’s been hit hard like most changeups but that’s more due to missing in the zone with it. Located better, it should be fine. I’d be curious to see if a different grip could help him further separate it from his fastball.
A small note, Statcast says he’s thrown two sliders but they seem like misreads to me. I think they were cutters that came out of his hand late, causing them to be slower and move a bit more. It would also explain why he yanked them so far to the left of the zone, neither of them was close. I’d be interested to see what happened if he tried to throw a more traditional slider, but this wasn’t that.
What Needs To Be Worked On
First and foremost, Arrighetti will live and die by his fastball. It will always be his primary pitch, and it will almost certainly always be his best offering from a stuff perspective. With that in mind, he desperately needs to sharpen his command of this pitch. It is easily the number one thing holding him back right now. His fastball has been crushed on contact, like most steep VAA fastballs are, because he hasn’t been able to keep it high and above the zone.
When he does improve his command of it, I would love to see him use the near foot of run he gets on it to his advantage. It’s just enough movement that he could theoretically run it inside against right-handed hitters like a sinker. That’s secondary though, I’d rather he focus on just keeping it high and away from the middle of the plate for now.
While his curve is working well for him in two-strike counts, I’d like to see him work on finishing hitters with his other pitches. Mainly, he has to figure out how to accomplish this with his fastball. It doesn’t have to be his go-to in these situations if he’s more comfortable with something else, but a fastball-based pitcher does need to be able to get the job done with it in these situations. I don’t mind if he wants to chase strikeouts with his breaking balls, there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s working. That said, his finishing rate with the fastball cannot remain where it is, not with how much he throws it.
I’m interested to watch how his cutter performs going forward. His aggression with the pitch and the success he’s found doing that is fascinating. If it doesn’t hold, I’d like to see him use his sweeper more against right-handed hitters instead of the cutter. His command of the sweeper is spotty, but if the cutter becomes a problem, it’s going to have to pick up the slack.
He used his changeup way more frequently in his last two outings against Minnesota and Texas, and that’s worth keeping an eye on. He was getting whiffs with it, which is certainly promising. More confidence in and success with his changeup could take some pressure off of his fastball while he’s ironing out the issue with it. There’s a slight concern about the different release points making it identifiable for hitters but his delivery is potentially unorthodox enough to mask it.
Final Thoughts
Everything revolves around his ability to refine the fastball control. Anything else is secondary to this. I’m not sure I see a future where he’s successful without making this step. That’s the gamble you’re making when believing in him. There is one very clear-cut improvement he needs to make, the question is if he can do it. Considering that he was fast-tracked through the minor leagues and is only three years removed from being a sixth round pick out of the Sun Belt conference, it’s probably fair to assume he’s got plenty of development left that he can make.
He’s only 24, and this is a sport where a slight change can cause a breakout long past when a player’s prime was supposed to be. I beg that we all be patient with him. The player he could be is such a fun thing to think about, and it’s a reasonable thing to expect he can make the improvements required. There’s not much in the way of his ascension, it’s largely just the one hurdle. It’s a big one, but it’s one I’m confident he’ll clear eventually. After that, who knows? Maybe he’ll fix the other little nitpicks I have but at that point, it would be a bonus added to a very good pitcher.